Hazard of the Dice
by PaolaAdara
Summary: Hypocrisy at its finest is a bitter pill to swallow.


Title: Hazard of the Dice (1/1)

Author: Paola

Disclaimer: _Hazard of the Dice_ is based on characters and situations that belong to Sunrise, Inc. (and other production affiliates that have the right of ownership). No money is being made, and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Consideration/s: Similarities to other stories/events/passages are purely coincidental unless otherwise cited.

Note/s: Written for 1sentence community off at LJ. Theme Set Epsilon. As per requirement, themes are written in order similar to their given set.

_**Hazard of the Dice**_

**Motion**

Every nerve ending is shaken alive, thrumming with the desire that is running in her veins and leaving the imprint of his being seared on her person, and she accepts everything he has to offer, drinking his air and sharing his passion, and they are moving the way a man and a woman are designed to move.

**Cool**

His lips are hot on her skin, his skin is scorching against hers, and even the chilling spray of the shower feels warm all of a sudden.

**Young**

Even when the war has taken a lot from them, there are still a lot of opportunities to make up for lost time so they take every chance they get to live the way they want to, to play under the sun, to swim in the ocean, to ride and feel the breeze on their faces, and to satiate the thirst to come together and re-assure each other that they are alive, again and again, through liquid motions that make them forget where one ends and the other begins.

**Last**

She checks her planner and encircles the date on a blank page, and she bites her lip in trepidation as she is reminded that there are only three days left before the month ends.

**Wrong**

Her heart leaps in her throat when she suddenly feels queasy upon catching a whiff of _the kung pao_ chicken he bought for her during one of their Chinese take-out nights — it used to be her favorite and now it's making her stomach turn and she knows that something is definitely not right.

**Gentle**

He holds her hair up and runs a calming hand down her back as she throws up her dinner, telling her that she better get to the hospital to have her stomach flu checked, and she feels guilty for lying to him when all he's shown her all this time is sincerity.

**One**

She hasn't taken any tests, hasn't gone once to the doctor, and she understands that she has to — has to confirm what she's done to her future…to _his_ future — but the thought of being right about her suspicion scares her like nothing has ever scared her before.

**Thousand**

Of all the things that she could have done wrong, she didn't think this one would be it.

**King**

"_I'll remain a knight, never a king, because a king's life is more important than the queen's, and that's not how it is between us" — she laughs, playing off the red that colors her cheeks, "That's corny, Athrun."_

**Learn**

Sometimes, she doubts she's ever really stood up for what's right and in times when her monsters make a grab for her, she thinks her life is a lesson in surrender.

**Blur**

_It's always the two of us… hey, the two of us… never just… never one… always with the other… Cagalli, Cagalli, Cagalli… forever… always, always… two for each… remember, don't forget…_

**Wait**

It's become almost like a twisted game, ticking the time before the next bout of nausea hits her.

**Change**

"Hey, Athrun, I think I'm changing for the worse," she says one day, and he only grins, like she's telling him a joke, and proceeds to embrace her — _that's impossible_, he replies — believing in her with all he's got, _so much, so much, so much so_ that it hurts.

**Command**

_Rock bottom…then all that's left to do is go up._

**Hold**

When he holds her at night, she can pretend that everything is all right.

**Need**

The desperate need to keep her balance leaves her leaning towards a decision that is ultimately, undeniably wrong.

**Vision**

She's blinded by what she believes is best for him, unwilling to ask for help, and even more unwilling to listen to that tiny voice begging her to shift directions.

**Attention**

If she can just focus, just go past her misguided beliefs, she'll remember that she can tell him, that he won't turn her away, that he'll reach for her hand, fall with her, then pick her up and dress her wounds.

**Soul**

She turns to her side, stares at his sleeping face — smiling that melancholic smile that hardly graced her face before but has now started to come more often — and caresses the familiar lines of his cheekbone, his nose, his eyes, his lips, feeling the tie binding their souls and knowing she'll be putting a crack on it.

**Picture**

It's all a blend of colors, blinding, distracting, moving so quickly before slowing down and forming a dream that clamps down on her heart.

**Fool**

She dreams of white flowers, of a warm breeze ruffling her hair, of a white dress with ribbons and ruffles, of purity and innocence, and when she wakes, she feels foolish for feeling for even just a second that the dream has a way of coming true.

**Mad**

For a moment, Cagalli doesn't understand what the doctor is telling her, hearing the words clearly but not making sense of them, and she detachedly wonders if she's gone crazy.

**Child**

She looks at the results with unseeing eyes, bitter at the confirmation of something she has known for days, and she feels the bile rise in her throat — _I can't breathe, I can't breathe_ — and this time, the nausea has nothing to do with what she's carrying.

**Now**

They say that nothing is as important as the present, the _today_, the _now_, but she thinks she'd rather go back to the past, when it was all uncomplicated, when all was right with the world, when there was still the chance that she might not have gotten the way she is now.

**Shadow**

She's afraid of a lot of things, she's discovered, like the inexplicable play of shadows at night, the incessant hooting of owls, and most recently, the uncertainty of her future.

**Goodbye**

As she waves goodbye to him for her return to Orb after a long stay at the PLANTs, her heart clenches when he smiles at her unguardedly, unaware of what she's about to do.

**Hide**

"Did you have the doctor check on your stomach flu?" comes Athrun's voice from the machine, making this call the tenth she hasn't answered.

**Fortune**

It's ironic that her fortune cookie says she'll be getting over an obstacle in her life quite easily.

**Safe**

She clutches the Haumea pendant she's borrowed from Athrun, waiting for the doctor to call her name.

**Ghost**

The sterile smell, the buzz of the air-conditioner, the clinks of surgical metals, the stench of blood — _deathdeathdeath_ — the white-washed walls, and the warm trail of tears escaping her eyes will never leave her, will always remain in her mind, reminding her of her own hypocrisy, like an incessant haunting that leaves her soul bare, raw, and vulnerable.

**Book**

"_You see, Daddy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies," she once told her father, quoting from her favorite classic._

**Eye**

"_Your eyes are amber, his are green, you'd have blue-eyed babies,"_ _Miriallia's teasing was answered by a playful glare and a secret gush of butterflies at the thought of what their future might be — "It doesn't quite work that way, Mir."_

**Never**

"_I don't understand how mothers can stomach killing their own baby."_

**Since**

She's come a long way from when she was painfully innocent, and the changes she's been through aren't exactly something she's very proud of.

**Sudden**

The tears come unbidden as she struggles to separate reality from dreams, visions of a child's happy face swimming before her eyes in the darkness of her room.

**Stop**

If time would just pause for a second, maybe she could begin collecting the pieces of herself that have been scattered by her selfishness.

**Time**

But the world is cruel, and the hands of the clock will always move, will not wait for her, will progress and forget her, and along with the passage of ticks and tocks is the weight of her mistake becoming harder to bear.

**Wash**

She splashes her face with cold water, looks in the mirror and sees haunting eyes, and takes a cleansing breath that doesn't do anything for her.

**Torn**

"_If I ever have to make a choice between what will make us happy and what is right, do you think I'll choose wisely?"_

**History**

"_I will love you forever, Cagalli," was answered by: "Notwithstanding my mistakes and more I'd probably commit?"_

**Power**

She collapses on the floor, her strength sapped away from her by the wrongness of her decision.

**Bother**

But because she believes this is the best for her — for _him_ — she can't be bothered by the guilt that's beginning to brew in her person…she can't be bothered, will not be bothered…_she shan't, she shan't, she shan't_.

**God**

What took God six days to create, took her only six minutes to kill (and now Athrun knows everything..._he knows, oh God, oh God…_).

**Wall**

Where once things between them flowed freely, now there's a barrier that blocks their connection, and there are no executive guards to help her, no Kira to save her, no Kisaka to catch her, just herself — _Cagalli Yula Athha…on her own, on her own, on her own_ — to scour her slate clean, start over, and be her own savior.

**Naked**

And now she's made her decision so she stands before him, stripped of everything — deceit, fears, uncertainty, bravado…and just _Cagalli_ — and, without tears, without anything, asks for forgiveness.

**Drive**

He doesn't take her into his arms, doesn't kiss her to tell her everything's all right, her "I'm sorry" is answered by a simple "We can start over," but despite the bareness of it all, the lack of bitterness in his expression is enough to drive her to tears — tears of relief for it doesn't seem that he hates her…at least, that's what she interprets his answer as.

**Harm**

The moment her sin was committed, she'd realized that she wasn't protecting him or his future, that she was only running away from the responsibility because she didn't trust that she could bear it, so when he finally smiles at her, she whispers, "Never again."

**Precious**

The breeze slowly blows through the empty memorial park, and Cagalli kneels down in front of a headstone, touches the cool surface, and in her heart she apologizes to what will never be because she'd been too foolish, too ignorant to recognize a blessing.

**Hunger**

That night, when he spoons her, she becomes painfully aware of how she's missed him.

**Believe**

There's always a chance that deep in his heart he hasn't forgiven what she's done, and she understands, but whenever he looks at her with those eyes filled with an emotion that warms her own heart, whenever he touches her with hands that promise protection, whenever he kisses her with everything he has, she wants to believe — _and please, please, please make it true _— that she's been granted absolution from her sin.

_~fin_

Citation/s:

"…when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies." – _Peter Pan_ by J.M. Barrie

Clarification/s:

Hazard of the dice – chance


End file.
